Secret agent (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Secret agent |
| Original title | Secret agent |
| Country of production | Great Britain |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1936 |
| length | 86 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Alfred Hitchcock |
| script |
Charles Bennett , Alma Reville |
| production |
Michael Balcon for Gaumont British Picture Corporation |
| music | Louis Levy , Hubert Bath |
| camera | Bernard Knowles |
| cut | Charles Frend |
| occupation | |
| |
Secret Agent (original title: Secret Agent) is a British spy - thriller by Alfred Hitchcock in the year 1936. It is based on two short stories by W. Somerset Maugham .
action
May 10, 1916. The British spy Edgar Brodie is dead, reports the press. In fact, he takes on a different identity, as he is supposed to be used as a secret agent in Switzerland. As Richard Ashenden he is supposed to kill an unknown spy there before he can escape into hostile territory. This is necessary to protect British interests in a Middle East crisis. A colleague from Mexico called "the General" is supposed to accompany Ashenden.
In his hotel room, Ashenden meets the spy Elsa, disguised as his wife, who has just been visited by her admirer Marvin. Elsa is initially on fire for the murder assignment and considers the whole thing to be a great adventure.
When Ashenden and "the General" find one of their informants murdered in a church, a jacket button in the dead man's hand leads them to a track. The agents identify the supposed owner of the button (an Englishman with a German wife). You want to lure him into a trap. To this end, the "married couple" who are engaged in espionage seeks acquaintance with the older English-German couple. In the meantime, “Mrs. Ashenden “often with Marvin, but rejects his advances.
Meanwhile, Elsa has scruples about her assignment, as she is more and more convinced that even political murder is morally reprehensible. The burgeoning love for Edgar / Richard also contributes to her changed attitude. “The General”, on the other hand, is increasingly turning out to be a murderous driving force on behalf of the British government.
The elimination of the enemy by the general and Ashenden, whose sense of duty to his country forces him to undertake the action as the “final last” espionage mission, is now to be carried out on a mountain hike. Ultimately, Ashenden shies away from direct involvement and leaves it to "the general" to plunge the old man into the depths, while Ashenden observes this with a telescope.
Tragically, however, it turns out that the victim was just a harmless tourist. Horrified by the senseless murder, Elsa and Ashenden decide to cancel the assignment.
A new lead, however, shakes Ashenden's decision again: Through an acquaintance, “the General” discovered that a nearby chocolate factory is being used by the German opponents as a conspiratorial cell. The two men spy on the spot, but then have to flee from the police. But they found out that Marvin is the man they were looking for.
Believing that Elsa, who is in truth attached to Marvin out of disappointment in her lover, would also have exposed him, they catch the train with which Marvin wants to leave at the last second. Marvin reveals his identity to Elsa, but at the same time sees through her disguise. Ashenden and his Mexican colleague find the two and prepare to liquidate Marvin. Elsa, however, thwarted the act at gunpoint and counters Ashenden's patriotic reproaches by pointing out the priority of their two moral integrity.
At that moment the train derailed during an air raid by British planes. Marvin is fatally trapped, but shortly before his death he still manages to shoot the murderous "general". Elsa and Ashenden sink into each other's arms, freed from the ultimately unbearable decisions about life and death. Back in England, both quit the service.
backgrounds
The writer William Somerset Maugham , who had experienced the First World War as a secret service worker, processed his experiences in several " Ashenden stories " named after the main character . One of them, The Hairless Mexican , turned the film critic Campbell Dixon into a play. The rights to it were acquired by the producer Michael Balcon , who commissioned Dixon to develop a treatment . The script was finally created by Hitchcock and Charles Bennett , who was already responsible for the scripts for his two successful films The Man Who Knew Too Much and The 39 Steps . They used the original story as well as the "Ashenden story" The Traitor as templates . All they did was take the love story from the play.
Acclaimed stage actor John Gielgud took on the role of Brodie / Ashenden , which was offered to him as a sort of modern Hamlet character , as a man in a moral dilemma. Hitchcock has always had an ambivalent relationship with actors who see themselves as artists in their own right, and he found that Gielgud's stage experience was more of a nuisance than useful. "I had to erase everything and start from scratch," he told the press. Gielgud himself found film work uncomfortable compared to theater . He felt almost sick with nervousness there and found himself pretty bad even in the finished film.
His nervousness was also due to the fact that Hitchcock paid much more attention to the female lead. The role of "Elsa Carrington" was taken on by Madeleine Carroll , who had already shone in The 39 Steps . She is considered the first typical "Hitchcock blonde". Hitchcock literally adored Carroll and, like in The 39 Steps , he knew how to put them in the picture extremely lovingly and advantageously. However, their cooperation with secret agent also ended. Carroll had worked in Hollywood since 1934; Michael Balcon could only bring it to Europe for these two films.
The character of the shady "General" was taken over by Peter Lorre , who had also worked in Hollywood for some time. The work turned out to be difficult because Lorre was now heavily addicted to morphine and took every opportunity to take his drugs. The shooting suffered a lot from Lorre's mood swings and volatility, his scenes could only be shot in one go in the rarest of cases. The "senseless" cuts forced in this way can be seen clearly in the finished film.
The third "Hollywood import" was Robert Young , who played the enemy spy and was cast against his type. He was the first "sympathetic villain" in Hitchcock's work - a role model that would shape his later films.
The then still unknown Lilli Palmer , Michael Redgrave and Michael Rennie appeared in supporting roles .
Hitchcock's commitment to the film waned over the course of the shooting, as his personal interest in his leading actress captured him. He focused almost exclusively on the scenes with Madeleine Carroll, which are therefore some of the best in the film. Outside of filming, however, he often made nasty, almost cruel jokes with her. This shows his ambivalent attitude towards the actresses he admires, as he showed in later years towards Ingrid Bergman , Vera Miles and Tippi Hedren , among others .
When working out the story, which was largely set in Switzerland , Hitchcock made sure that the milieu was described as typical of the country as possible. So he relocated the agents' headquarters to a chocolate factory, and the secret message is conveyed in a bar of chocolate. One murder takes place in a Swiss village church and another murder occurs when the victim is pushed off a mountain cliff in front of the picturesque mountain landscape. Hitchcock even built Swiss dance folklore into the plot. The scene in which Elsa Carrington and Robert Marvin are driving in the carriage and have communication problems with the (non-English speaking) coachman, however, was not in the script; it was improvised contrary to Hitchcock's other customs.
Despite his demeanor during filming, Hitchcock was pleased with the result. He later confessed: “I was very fond of 'Secret Agent'. I am sorry that it did not become a great success. ”But he also acknowledged the problem of the Gielgud role of the anti-hero :“ It is difficult to warm up to a hero who does not want to be a hero. ”Indeed, were Anti-heroism, exposure of popular figures (Young) and sadistic "good" agents (Lorre) were unfamiliar fare for the cinema audience of the time. Hitchcock was a few decades ahead of his time with his secret agent .
The audience success was less than that of the two previous films , but Secret Agent was able to more than bring in its costs.
Reviews
“A worthy companion for its illustrious and very successful predecessor 39 levels . The plot unfolds in the psychological reactions of the main characters. There are intellectual dialogues, good-natured humor, romantic entanglements. "
“ While the Secret Agent boasts of the literary origins of a Somerset Maugham novel, it is nonetheless one of those films in which virtually every member of the cast turns out to be a spy, not except Robert Young, who is supposed to be believed to be an American Is a spy in the wages of the Axis powers . Once you've digested that, it's no longer difficult to imagine Madeleine Carroll as an amateur agent who joined the secret service for the fun of thrills and who was sent to Geneva to meet John Gielgud's wife as part of an espionage campaign to play, to fall in love with this one while she is pursued by Mr. Young. "
“Madeleine Carroll seems very convincing and very human in her inner aversion to the job she has given up for. Robert Young plays the German agent with cunning cunning and sovereign strength, especially when it finally comes to life at the rousing climax under the crash of bombs and the hideous noise of derailing trains. The achievements of these two actors are of course still overshadowed by Peter Lorre. As a Mexican 'general' with the heart of a butcher, he teaches the audience the most intense creeps. Mr. Hitchcock would have been well advised if he had given up the incoherent and annoying love story and given Lorre more space. "
"Subtle spy comedy, tricky with surprise effects and puns ."
literature
- William Somerset Maugham : Ashenden or the British Secret Agent. Narratives . Diogenes, Zurich 1987, 282 pages, ISBN 3-257-20337-3
- François Truffaut : Mr. Hitchcock, how did you do it? (1962). Heyne, 2003, ISBN 3-453-86141-8
- Robert A. Harris / Michael S. Lasky / Joe Hembus (eds.): Alfred Hitchcock and his films. Goldmann, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-442-10201-4
- John Russel Taylor: The Hitchcock biography , Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1982, ISBN 3-596-23680-0
- Donald Spoto: Alfred Hitchcock - The dark side of genius . Heyne, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-453-55146-X
- Bodo Fründt: Alfred Hitchcock and his films . Heyne, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-453-86091-8
Web links
- Secret Agent in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Secret agent in the online film database
- Download the film from the Internet Archive
- Review by Ulrich Behrens in the Filmzentrale
- Extract from the interview “Mr. Hitchcock, how did you do that? ”On the online film database
Individual evidence
- ↑ Secret Agent. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 28, 2016 .